A look at the ways Google’s SVP of global marketing, Lorraine Twohill, tackles her day. “Time to think is the scarcest resource,” she says.

“Google is a very fast-paced place,” says Lorraine Twohill, the company’s senior VP of global marketing. “It’s never gotten boring, but you also have to be super organized.” A 12-year Google veteran, Twohill is intimately familiar with the company’s productivity tools. But she’s also fond of a more natural sort of Google resource.

“I get out of the building and go for a walk and look at the trees. Time to think is the scarcest resource in life. I use my drive to and from work to think, but it’s never quite enough. For me, going for a walk and being in fresh air is almost a form of meditation.”

“Every morning, I look through all my emails and star the ones that I want to have cleared by the end of the day. I have made peace with myself that I may not get back to all the rest. You get older and wiser and realize you can’t do it all. You can’t even begin to do it all. You have to be realistic.”

“I have between 17 and 20 meetings in a day. I’ll do stand-up meetings, walking one-on-ones. In my role, a lot of people want to run stuff by me, and I don’t want to be the bottleneck. I’m obsessive about making meetings highly productive.”

“I go to SoulCycle at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. It’s a cleansing ritual. It makes me feel like I have earned my glass of wine. And when I walk into my home, I’m done. The kids take over, giving you hugs and telling you about their day. It’s family time. Kids are the best way of balancing your life.”

advertisement

A version of this article appeared in the November 2015 issue of Fast Company magazine.

About the author

Elizabeth Segran, Ph.D., is a staff writer at Fast Company. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.